Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
May 27, 2008 Tuesday
Final Edition; All Editions
Weaving a future from ashes of their past
by Janet H. Cho, Plain Dealer Reporter
The Arslanian Brothers could only watch as a fire consumed their
carpet and rug cleaning company last May, snuffing out 48 years of
pride and loyalty. They didn’t let the devastation defeat them.
They had customers to appease and a business to rebuild
When the Arslanian Brothers Carpet & Rug Cleaning Co. was consumed in
an inferno last May, the owners had every reason to walk away.
What started as an electrical fire quickly engulfed the 90-year-old
building on Miles Road in Cleveland and continued burning until
dawn. More than 1,200 customers’ rugs, including priceless heirlooms,
were incinerated.
Ted, Hank and Armen Arslanian, all in their 60s, stood across the
street and watched incredulously as the 48-year-old family business
burned down.
But none of them considered abandoning the laborious rug-cleaning
business that had helped them put their 10 children through college
and support their own immigrant Armenian parents. They had invested
too much in the company, and too many people were counting on them to
come back.
"I didn’t know how it was going to get done, but I just thought,
‘God’s been so good to us, somehow we’re going to get through this,’ "
Hank Arslanian said.
A year later, Arslanian Brothers has reopened its doors. But the
company is still struggling to knit together the network of customers
it had built up before the fire. The family hasn’t been able to reach
all of its customers because all records, invoices and client contacts
were destroyed. Some customers still take rugs to the old address, now
an empty lot.
The company now operates out of a hulking, 22,000-square-foot
warehouse at 19499 Miles Ave. in Warrensville Heights, four miles from
its former site. The firm cleans and repairs rugs at its plant and
dispatches cleaning crews to homes and businesses. The company employs
26 people, down from a high of 29, including 11 members of the
Arslanian family.
Ted Arslanian estimates that 98 percent of the 1,200 rugs lost in the
fire have been replaced.
Allen and Jean Joyce, who lost a rug that cost more than $4,000, can’t
say enough about the family. The Arslanians invited the couple to a
warehouse full of rugs that the company had purchased as replacements
for customers and told them they could take anything they wanted,
Allen Joyce said. "And if we weren’t satisfied with what they had
there, we could’ve gone to an importer and picked one from him. They
made it right. Nowadays, you don’t find many people like that."
Mia Jackson, who lost five Persian rugs valued between $5,000 and
$8,000, said: "They went above and beyond what they needed to do to
replace my rugs. . . . They kept my loss as important as their loss. I
even sent them thank you flowers for how well I was treated."
Armen Arslanian said the disaster not only enabled the company to
rebuild its headquarters, it also sparked an outpouring of generosity
from longtime friends and business associates. Local rug stores and
importers gave the Arslanians deep discounts to help them reimburse
their customers. Other businesses, such as Kurtz Brothers Landscape
Centers, lent them space and refused to take rent for it.
The Arslanians declined to say how much of the losses was covered by
insurance.
Family built business from ground up
Ted Arslanian, the eldest son of Armenian immigrants George and
Virginia, started the business in 1959 in an old movie theater behind
his father’s and uncle’s Arslanian Brothers Barbershop. Middle brother
Hank joined him two years later.
Ted turned his back on a football scholarship from Michigan State
University after spending a summer working at another uncle’s
rug-cleaning plant in Cherry Hill, N.J. "My parents were crushed," he
said.
Baby brother Armen was still in grade school, but his brothers paid
him pennies to hang advertisements on people’s doorknobs.
"That first winter, business was so slow I got a job in the steel
mills, and whatever money I made, I put into the business," Hank
Arslanian said.
In 1961, the brothers bought their first automatic rug washer, and the
orders took off. They were among the first companies in the Midwest to
offer truck-mounted rug-cleaning machines, which let them go on-site
to shampoo wall-to-wall carpeting.
At its peak, the company was cleaning 140 rugs a day.
The brothers had just started talking about passing the business along
to their children, many of whom already worked there, when the fire
struck.
"Maybe if they weren’t going to be so involved, we would’ve said, ‘To
heck with it,’ " Armen said.
They spent the months after the fire trying to keep the mobile
carpet-cleaning side of the business going while they dealt with angry
and distraught customers.
"The first week was just awful because we didn’t have a working
phone," Ted said.
"We were working Sundays and evenings trying to get things going
again," Armen said.
"It was a nightmare," Hank added.
Within months, they were working out of three warehouses, washing and
drying rugs at one site and storing them in another.
It cost them $100,000 to fix the enormous rug-washing machine they
pulled from the fire, one of only 70 of its kind still operating.
Ron Moore, the owner of Moore’s Time-Saving Equipment, the company
that used to make the machines, called workers out of retirement to
rebuild the Arslanians’ washer.
They spent $250,000 to rebuild their computer-controlled rug-drying
room, which can dry 100 9-foot-by-12-foot rugs at once. Renovating the
warehouse cost another $200,000.
Hank Arslanian, who oversees rug restorations, managed to salvage his
favorite pair of shears from the rubble. But he mourns the loss of
thousands of rug remnants and hundreds of bolts of yarn he used to
repair and weave damaged rugs.
The Arslanian family is well-regarded in an industry full of larger
chains, said Tom Sherman, president of the Ohio Chapter of the Society
of Cleaning and Restoration Technicians and owner of Professional
Carpet Systems of Northeast Ohio.
"It’s rare to find companies like Arslanian Brothers," he said. "If I
get a problem I’ve never seen, they’re the first people I call."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
